Good for you! More importantly, good for your students.
My children go to a very good charter school. It’s consistently the top-rated school in the district. The charter school teaches phonics. The kids have to memorize things, such as spelling words and multiplication tables. They drill a lot of basic arithmetic. It’s not a religious school, but the school’s teachers and administrators are socially very conservative. Values and character instruction are integrated into every grade’s curriculum. The school holds the kids to high standards of conduct. Hard work and achievement (rather than “self esteem”) are among the values promoted.
Even there, I see the influence of some of these pernicious educational theories creeping in. My fourth grader has algebra and geometry topics sprinkled into his math. The math curriculum in every grade skips around far too much, in my opinion. My kindergartener sometimes has to do “word shape” puzzles in which he has to find the proper word to fit into each box based on its shape. I see my kids assigned more group projects than I would like. (I’ve hated group projects ever since I was the kid who had to carry the other kids in groups.)
Some of these curriculum issues are driven by forces outside the school’s control. For example, the fourth grade FCAT (our state’s assessment test) includes some algebra and geometry problems. So, our school has to teach some algebra and geometry by the fourth grade. Still, I wonder if the school will be able to resist the trendy liberal curricula and modern educational theories long enough for all of my children to get a good education there.
Scary. Even at a good school, the nonsense creeps in.
Word shape puzzles??? OMG.
Please show the original article to the principal.
Funny you mention the FCAT, I work for the organization that makes them. :)
My bet is there are one or two questions involving algebra and geometry.
If the children had a sound mastery of 4th grade arithmetic their scores on these standardized tests would be outstanding, even if they did get the one or two algebra and geometry questions wrong.